Britain: A damning report on treatment for trans youth
Britain has failed our most vulnerable children, said Sonia Sodha in The Observer.A “devastating” new inquiry into trans medicine for minors has found that for years, the National Health Service put large numbers of gender-questioning kids on “an irreversible medical pathway” based on “little more than professional hunches.” Following a now-discredited Dutch protocol, doctors at the NHS’s trans youth care center prescribed puberty blockers to under-16s experiencing gender dysphoria to buy them “time to think” about transitioning, and started over-16s on “cross-sex hormones”—which can endanger their bone health and fertility and render them lifelong patients. The inquiry says the clinic ignored evidence that gender dysphoria in adolescents often “self-resolves naturally.” Yet the 388-page report is no transphobic hit job. Author Hilary Cass, a renowned pediatrician, spent four years researching trans care. She concluded that the NHS was too quick to prescribe “life-altering” drugs to people too young to give meaningful consent, and that far from buying kids time to think, puberty blockers can push them toward a trans identity that may not be appropriate.
What drove doctors to experiment on innocent children? asked Kemi Badenoch, minister for women and equalities, in The Sunday Times. “Ideological capture.” Trans activists have bullied politicians and doctors into embracing “medicalized child abuse” and cowed dissenters into silence. But the biggest victims of these ideologues are the “detransitioners”: people who regret their sex-altering treatments, who have been “left deformed or unable to have children.” Girls are at greatest risk, said Ed Cummings in The Daily Telegraph. In 2012, there were fewer than 250 referrals to the service, nearly all natal boys. By 2022, the number had risen to 5,000, and two-thirds were natal girls. Some seemed to feel social pressure; many had other underlying factors such as autism, eating disorders, or depression. Nor were parents free of pressure. Cass’ report says the trans debate has grown so toxic that parents “feel forced to allow their children to transition so they are not labeled transphobic.”
Cass herself is no transphobe, said Freddy McConnell in The Guardian. She does not deny our identity, and like us, she wants “care for trans young people that is ‘unhurried, holistic, therapeutic, safe, and effective.’” Yet her report does reflect the “anti-trans ideology” that has seized hold of Britain. She has overemphasized the prevalence of detransitioners, when studies show that “regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries” are only around 1 percent. Actually, we don’t know if that figure is correct, said Janice Turner in The Times. Record keeping at the sole youth NHS gender clinic—which is now closed—was so slipshod that there’s no data on how many patients got such treatment. Nor do we know how they’ve fared since, because 6 out of 7 NHS adult gender clinics refused to cooperate with Cass. This data vacuum is “not a glitch but a feature” of a field that’s ruled by activism, not science. And that bodes ill for any lasting reform coming from this report. How can we “create a new, evidence-based service” if it is “still staffed by clinicians who abhor evidence?”